


Fork in the Road

by ravenclawkohai



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Dishonored AU, Post-Low Chaos Ending, The Knife of Dunwall, alternate path to low chaos ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:11:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclawkohai/pseuds/ravenclawkohai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She was late.<br/>It reeked, the whale above was still twitching in its chains, and his informant was late.<br/>And people wondered why he hated using outside help so much."<br/>AU: The Knife of Dunwall takes place after the low chaos ending; Emily is on the throne, but Daud is still trying to find redemption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fork in the Road

                She was late.

                It reeked, the whale above was still twitching in its chains, and his informant was late.

                And people wondered why he hated using outside help so much.

                Daud began to pace, avoiding still-fresh whale-blood when he could (slick soles made it easier to slip in a fight) and tried to ignore how the sounds from the whale above stopped. He didn’t know why the informant insisted on a slaughterhouse; they were dark at night and avoided by everyday citizens, but there were more guards than most places kept. He had a strong hunch that it was to irritate him. She liked to do that. She knew she could get away with it; she was the best informant in the city and he needed eyes and ears inside that damned brothel. Anywhere else, he’d send one of the Whalers, but there was only so much information they could gather as “repeat customers.”

                He turned, cursing under his breath, and began winding his way back to the window to check for her. It had been too long. This was past the point of trying to irritate him. If she was caught, it would be hell to clean up.

                He reached the window and peered out, inspecting the streets below. No sign of her. He’d have to send one of the Whalers to check for her. Across the street, one of the new clocktowers stood. If it had been more than half an hour, he’d call one of the Whalers here now; better to get them moving sooner if she was really in danger. It was twenty minutes past midnight—

                It had been five minutes.

                Daud squinted at the clock.

                The hands weren’t moving.

                “I was wondering how long it would take you to notice.”

                It took him a half-second too long—after all, this was the Outsider written all over. It threw him.

                He only just had time to clear his sword from its sheath before Corvo shoot it from his hand. His other hand was halfway to his gun when Corvo held up his other hand and his gun.

                “I’m not here for a rematch, Daud.”

                His hand paused, inches away from his gun. Corvo slowly put his gun away. He lowered his hands to his side.

                It ha been a year since Emily took the throne. When Daud saw Corvo last, he was little more than a beggar in the Lord Protector’s coat. His clothes and hands were covered in dirt, his clothes bore singed holes from the river krusts, his shoulder slumped from frustration and exhaustion. He was a sack of bones and scars wrapped in the coat of a long-lost station and a mask as skeletal as his, topped off with a Mark from the Void. He looked like he’d been to the Overseer’s Hell and back.

                Now he stood maskless, clean and healthy, with a new, if identical, coat around him. His back was straight and though the scars were all still there, this was a new man. He may have had bags below his eyes, but they were guard-bags, there from late patrols, not beggar-bags from sleepless nights spent fighting to survive. This Corvo wasn’t quite whole, but he was miles away from the broken man that spared his life on that rooftop. Even the Mark that had topped it all off back then was now hidden behind immaculate white leather.

                Daud lowered his hands as well.

                “I have to say, of all of Dunwall’s elite, you’re the last I would have thought would come to me with a job,” Daud said. “Who will it be, Corvo?”

                A frown flickered over his face before he settled on looking distinctly unamused.

                “Unless you want help finding the holes in your security, and I don’t promise to show all of them to you, I don’t think I can be of much help.”     

                He normally wouldn’t have even offered this much. But—well, Corvo was a different case. He knew what it was like to be the Outsider’s favorite. He was a fighter and a killer and still a good man. He had beaten him in a fight. He was as powerful as the nobility but was no means one of them.

                He had won his respect.

                Corvo clasped his hands behind his back. Normally, that was the stance of an overconfident idiot. Sure of his power with absolutely no need to fear that he might need to fight. Corvo could blink away from any attack and be prepared to fight in seconds. This wasn’t overconfidence. It was a ploy, and from the almost absentminded, accidental way he slipped into the position, it was one he used daily.

                “I’m not here to talk business, Daud.”

                “Then what are you here to talk about?”

                Corvo paused. If he were a guard, his hands would have flexed or twitched. If he were a nobleman, he would have shifted or cracked his neck. The Lord Protector was famous for having no tells. He was famous for being able to stare a man down with a flat look and make him feel uncomfortable or guilty or threatened when other men would have been showing tells.

                But what people who didn’t routinely risk their lives on their ability to read tells didn’t realize was that his stare _was_ a tell.

                And it said that there was something very obvious that Corvo thought he should have realized by now.

                “You can’t redeem yourself by killing people.”

                Daud knew what Corvo’s view would be. He had killed High Overseer Campbell and the Pendleton twins before the deaths suddenly stopped. He had never killed guards or Overseers, but after the three assassinations, he began going out of his way to find other ways to eliminate his targets. Most people thought he lost his nerve—that he couldn’t stomach murdering people in cold blood. The Whalers even took it as a sign of weakness.

                Daud always disagreed.

                It wasn’t weakness to be so tired of bloodshed that you stop taking the easy way out.

                It wasn’t weakness to try to be a good man in a shit world.

                It never occurred to him that it could mean anything else.

                The bottom fell out of his stomach.

                He had never considered that Corvo stopped killing because there was no redemption to be found in a pool of blood.

                Before Daud was quite sure what was happening, his sword was crashing against Corvo’s. He stopped thinking. The fight was a lethal mix of gunfire, swinging swords, and disappearing foes. The familiar motions blocked out all thought, his focus narrowing down to the fight.

                People didn’t call Serkonans quick-tempered without cause.

                They were evenly matched. Each time a shot was fired, the target vanished. Each sword thrust had a parry. Every step, a counter-step. It wasn’t a question of skill. It was a question of stamina. Sooner or later, one of them would be run down enough to miss a beat. It was just a question of when.

                In frozen time, neither could be quite sure how long they were fighting. Both had sweat on their brows and the blows were coming a little slower. Daud didn’t know how many would-be minutes they were into the fight when his side-step caught the uneven corner of a floorboard and he stumbled into a wall. The tip of Corvo’s sword was beneath his throat a moment later.

                Daud froze, meeting Corvo’s steady stare.

He paused.

He let his sword drop and held up his hands.

                Corvo’s blade stayed in place, but his other hand fished an envelope from his pocket and held it out.

                “In case you aren’t too determined to find out I’m right the hard way.”

                Daud took it.

                Corvo folded away his sword.

                “Think about it carefully. It will only be valid until the end of the month.”

                With that, Corvo turned, walked calmly to the window, and stepped from its ledge.

                The air wavered, and suddenly the dust motes began to fall again, and time plunged onward.

                Daud bent, grabbed his sword, and tucked it away. He began walking back to where his informant was supposed to meet him. With the whale, that was twitching again now that time allowed it to, back in eyesight, he stopped, opened the envelope, and pulled out the document inside.

                The stationary was too stiff to be a letter, the ink too fine to come from less than a nobleman’s pen. The penmanship was that of a man considered spending all day at a writing desk “working with his hands.” Had Corvo really been around the aristocracy that long?

                And then he paid closer attention to the words on the page.

                Hidden between the titles and terms, Daud found an imperial pardon for himself and his men. There was an offer for a noble title for him. More significantly, there was an offer to make him the Royal Spymaster, with the Whalers all under his employ.

                It was an offer to legitimize himself and his men.

                The bottom of the page bore Empress Emily Kaldwin’s signature.

                It was the last thing he had been expecting.

                It put a fork in what he thought was a very straight road.

                Daud wasn’t quite sure if he stood in shock for seconds or minutes, but it took the heavy footsteps of an oncoming patrolling guard to make him move. He stepped through the air, appearing on a ledge dozens of feet above the whale where a guard would not pass for ten minutes.

                He began to fold the document to put it in his pocket when he realized there was another paper behind it.

                The paper was less stiff this time, yet the ink of the same quality. The handwriting was little better than a scrawl.

                _Daud,_

_I know the aristocracy is annoying, but you get used to it. You’d do a lot of good here and if you keep up as is, sooner or later I’m going to be sent to stop you. As much as He might find that entertaining, I’d prefer it if it didn’t come to that. It’d be a shame to have to kill another Serkonan just because he took a little too long to realize how to redeem himself._

_-Corvo_

Daud began to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys! This was my first time trying to write Daud, so apologies of the characterization is a little off. Also, yes, another choose your own ending story: did Daud take the offer or didn't he? It's up to you! Hope you enjoy!


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